GoDaddy's .com renewal: what the second year really costs
GoDaddy sells .com at $12.17 in year one and renews at $22.99. The five-year bill, the privacy add-on maths, and what budget registrars charge for the same domain.
GoDaddy is the world's largest registrar, and its checkout reflects that. The first-year .com price is aggressive, the upsell chain is long, and the renewal — the number you keep paying every year after — is roughly double the first year. This is the classic renewal trap at its most industrial scale, and it is worth pricing precisely.
The first-year figure below comes from OneYearDeal's live price database; the renewal figures are GoDaddy's published renewal rates as collected in third-party price surveys, checked October 2026. All prices are US dollars per year.
The .com bill, year one vs year two
- First year: $12.17 (our database, 1-year term).
- Renewal: $22.99 — GoDaddy's published .com renewal rate for 2026, confirmed across several price trackers (digitalhosting.com lists $22.99 verified September 2026; codeless.co's May 2026 table lists .com $22.99, .org $23.99, .net $24.99).
- The jump: the second year costs 1.9× the first.
Third-party surveys also report first-year promos as low as $0.99–$2.99 on .com, which makes the headline deal look spectacular and the second year look like a different product.
Five years of one .com, compared
Using our $12.17 first year and GoDaddy's $22.99 renewal, then the same five-year window on registrars from OneYearDeal's own price table:
| Registrar | First year | Renewal | Five-year total |
|---|---|---|---|
| GoDaddy | $12.17 | $22.99 | $104.13 |
| Cloudflare | $10.44 | $13.48 | $64.36 |
| Spaceship | $8.88 | $9.98 | $48.80 |
| Porkbun | $11.08 | $11.08 | $55.40 |
| Dynadot | $10.88 | $10.88 | $54.40 |
| NameSilo | $17.29 | $17.29 | $86.45 |
A five-year GoDaddy .com costs $104.13. The same domain at Spaceship costs $48.80 — spaceship renews at $9.98 and includes WHOIS privacy free, where GoDaddy's privacy add-on runs about $9.99 a year, which pushes GoDaddy's true five-year figure with privacy past $150. Over five years the GoDaddy .com is more than double the cheapest alternative in our table.
The upsell machine matters too
In our database GoDaddy's own .com listing carries the notes "massive upsell machine" and "renewal shock typical", with domain privacy listed as free — but independent surveys consistently report privacy renewals at $9.99 a year and auto-renew add-ons quietly attached. The invoice you expect at renewal and the invoice you get can differ by two or three line items. Budget registrars keep the invoice equal to the sticker.
How to use this
GoDaddy is usable if you want 24/7 phone support and are happy to pay for it: the premium over budget registrars is roughly $100 over five years on a .com, which is the price of the ecosystem. If you just want the domain, price the renewal first. Our GoDaddy deals page and GoDaddy business page list everything we track.
For the flat-renewal alternative, see Dynadot's flat renewals; for registrar-to-registrar pricing, see our Porkbun vs Spaceship vs Cloudflare comparison; and for the widest cheap-first-year picture, NameSilo's cheap first-year TLDs.
Published 8 October 2026